Call for wide review: Proposed Process 2021

Dear Advisory Committee Representative, Chairs, and members of the public,

The W3C Advisory Board, supported by W3C management, is forwarding its proposed Process 2021 draft for consideration, and requests comments by *Friday July 2nd 2021*, with a request that comments, if possible and especially if substantive, be filed before, or raised at, the Process CG meeting on 23rd June, so as to give time to handle them.

  W3C Process Document
  Draft Community Group Report, 3 June 2021
  https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/


The major changes are summarized briefly below, and all changes are fully documented in the changes section:
  https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#changes-2020

Due to the “major editorial reorganization” we did (see below), a direct diff of this with the currently active Process is not useful; therefore, we have prepared a document including the substantive changes but without this editorial restructuring, and a diff for that is available:
<https://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=&doc2=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FConsortium%2FProcess%2FDrafts%2Fp2021-before-reorg%2F>


This update contains a number of features important to our community, and deserves careful review. A brief summary of the major changes:

* Registries Track
Introduced a specialized track for maintaining Registries at W3C. We made this as flexible as possible, to allow for a variety of management styles.

* W3C Statements
Introduced the concept of a W3C-consensus document that is not a Recommendation: Statements. Statements are built from the existing WG-consensus Notes.

* TAG and AB Publications
Made it clear that the TAG and the AB can publish Notes (and request their elevation to Statements.)

* Track Separation
Separated the various publication tracks: Recommendations, Notes+Statements, Registries, to make it easier to know what the intended end-state of a document might be. (Notes will have their own dedicated early-stage Draft Note status, and abandoned REC-track work will no longer cross over to be published as Notes, but have their own status as Discontinued Drafts.)

* Tooling Policy
Defined basic policies for the tools that groups can use for publication and discussion, to ensure longevity and accessibility.

* Alternate AC Reps
AC Reps are now safe to take a vacation or other leave, as they can designate a trusted alternate.

* Major Editorial Reorganization
The document was editorially restructured and its introduction refreshed. Now matters on W3C composition (Members and the Team), groups (both Process-defined such as the AC, AB and TAG; and charter-defined), and publications (Recommendations, Notes/Statements, and Registries) are each in their own chapters.

See https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#changes-2020 for details.


This message initiates a comment period that closes on 2nd July 2021. Nonetheless we request you comment as soon as possible (ideally by June 23rd), to facilitate timely discussion and response preparation. After the comment period the W3C Process CG and the AB will finalize a revision, which we anticipate sending for formal AC review and approval in July.

Specific comments on this revision of the Process are best filed as Github issues, or even pull requests, at the Process CG github site, using the label “AC-Review”:
  https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues

More general discussion and comments should be sent to
  public-w3process@w3.org (Public), https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/

If a member-only list is preferred, you may use 
 process-issues@w3.org (member-only), https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/process-issues/

(You may discuss your comments on any other list, such as w3c-ac-forum@w3.org, as long as you also send the comments to the w3process lists above so that we can track them.)

The Advisory Board handles Process evolution “in the open”, in the Process Community Group, and we encourage members of the community to join to help shepherd Process evolution:
 https://www.w3.org/community/w3process/


Thank you for your careful scrutiny of this important update.


For David Singer, Chair, W3C Process Community Group, 
Elika Etemad, Editor, W3C Process Document,
Florian Rivoal, Editor, W3C Process Document;
Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications


--
Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -  https://www.w3.org
mailto:coralie@w3.org +337 810 795 22 https://www.w3.org/People/Coralie/

Received on Thursday, 3 June 2021 16:04:46 UTC